Product Description

Jemima Jones is overweight. About seven stone overweight. Treated like a slave by her thin and bitchy flatmates, lorded over at the Kilburn Herald by the beautiful Geraldine (less talented, better paid), her only consolation is food. That and a passion for her charming, sexy colleague Ben. Her life needs to change and soon. But can Jemima reinvent herself? Should she? A novel about attraction, obsession and the meaning of true love.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13522 in Books
• Published on: 2006-08-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 464 pages

About the Author
Jane Green is a journalist and lives in London. JEMIMA J is her second novel.

Customer Reviews

Plodding and patronising
A dull, patronising book with a main character who ends up being so self-righteous that you want to slap her face and throw the book out of the window. No-body likes Fat Jemima, everyone loves thin Jemima. Fat Jemima is a failure, thin Jemima is a success. To add to the stereotype, the hero is hardly even 'friends' with Fat Jemima but 'in love' with Thin Jemima

This short-story plot was dragged (under protest) into novel-size in a writing-by-numbers manner that leaves the reader assured of the ending by Chapter 2. No surprises, no revelations and patronising at best.

Leave it on the shelf.

Faintly ridiculous
I was disappointed with the whole book, though it was a reasonably enjoyable read, somehow the plot and characters just didn't gel at all, Jemima moves from being fat and unloved to skinny and desired in a matter of 3 months!. Though this may be the fantasy of many women out there, I just couldn't swallow the timespan. Again with the characters who seem to form bonds,that most people make over a few years, in the space of a month! The saddest point about the whole book though, was if the author was trying to make a comment about self image etc, it doesn't seem to accross at all well - in fact quite the opposite, because Jemima J only gets her confidence, friends, man, life - once she has completely changed herself to the accepted image that made her so miserable beforhand (ie skinny people) Not a fantasy tale just completely unreal.

Unbelievably offensive
It would be nice for once if Jane Green could provide us with a positive female role model instead of these vacuous women who obsess about their appearances, weight, designer wardrobes, have nothing of interest to say for themselves & on this basis are able to get their dream man. What sort of message is this coveying to women out there?

This book was insulting - office dog's body and friendless, ridiculed, sad singleton transformed to Ms Career & Relationship Success of the decade after having lost a few stone and dyed her hair blonde. What is the message here? That we should all be aspiring size 10s and blonde?

Contemporary novels should be challenging the beauty myth & not perpetuating it. It saddens and infuriates me that people actually enjoy reading this superficial nonsense.